I’ve been a user of Bloglines for what seems like a long time now, though it’s probably only been a little over a year. I thought highly enough of the service, in fact, that when I wrote up my HowTo on reading blogs, I used Bloglines as the example reader. But as of today, I’m done with Bloglines. Maybe I’ll come back, but probably not any time soon. Why? Innovation, or more accurately a distinct lack of it.
In a Boston Globe article from earlier this week, KarmaOne’s Auren Hoffman said the following: “Anytime companies get big, they innovate less.” While this sort of generalization is the type I typically try and avoid, I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement - particularly in the case of Bloglines. Now while it’s true that Bloglines per se isn’t a big company, it was bought by Ask Jeeves which in turn was bought by IAC/InterActiveCorp. With all of the resources that a larger company can provide, what’s new about Bloglines these days? Nothing, near as I can tell. It’s a fine reader, don’t get me wrong, but it is essentially the same reader it was when I started using it over a year ago. And in the Adam Bosworth described world of web applications that thrive on an iterate, iterate, iterate development model, that’s not encouraging. Russell Beattie expressed some similar concerns here. I might not need a new feature a day - and that would undoubtedly be disruptive from a UI perspective - but some improvement or evolution over the course of a year or more would seem to be a reasonable expectation. As Richard McManus reports, the focus from Bloglines seems to be primarily on the back end these days. Fair enough, but that’s not making my life better - it’s just maintaining the status quo. So Bloglines, thanks for all your help to date, but I think it’s time we see other people.
Having made the decision to move on from Bloglines, the question then becomes what’s going to take its place? Given the amount of time I spend in my aggregator these days, it’s not a trivial decision. My main requirement is that it be network based: I have little interest in a client side aggregator, because I need to be able to get at my feeds in varying locations.
In that context, one interesting option might be the just announced Google Reader. This is the day that purveyors of aggregating technologies have long feared: the entrance of the 800 lb gorilla of the web application space, Google. From my initial experience, however, it seems as if the folks from Google might have a little more work to do. Scoble’s impressions were favorable, but I’m a bit less impressed. It took a while for it to import my 490 or so feeds - a good half hour at least - and the interface seems to want to break down my preference towards browsing by feed to a river-of-news/relevance style interface. Maybe it’ll be like Gmail, where after a brief period of adjustment I come to appreciate it, but for now at least it’s not for me.
What about NewsGator Online? Scoble’s been a champion of these guys for a while, and and having had the opportunity to meet their team - they’re about 20 blocks away from me - I can tell you that they’re smart folks with a good vision of the aggregation opportunity. But NewsGator Online to me is not truly innovative; it’s not the Gmail to Bloglines’ Hotmail, in other words. It’s merely solid. Ditto for Rojo, though I haven’t used that in a few months at least.
So instead I’m turning to the currently closed alpha brainchild of a couple of Friends of RedMonk, FeedLounge. FeedLounge, which has been previously discussed in this space, is the product of Alex King/Scott Sanders efforts, and is IMO a great look at what a next generation reader can and should be. While I’ve seen some commentary on how readers should leverage Attention based data or better leverage cross-blog conversations, I’m a shortest-distance-to-declare-victory kind of guy. Give me the same old browsing experience, but made dramatically better via an injection of Ajax, and I’ll be a happy camper. I don’t want to wait for the once and future reader, and with FeedLounge I don’t have to. The single most compelling feature for me about FeedLounge is the fact that I can navigate the entire UI via the keyboard; indeed, for just browsing new posts I don’t need to do anything than keep hitting the space bar. It’s amazing how the little things, like Ajax-based keyboard navigation, can make such a big difference. FL isn’t perfect, and has some “early release” warts, but it’s still the best choice for me.
Anyway, I’ll do a more complete breakdown on my likes/dislikes with respect to FeedLounge, but for now I just want to say good bye Bloglines and hello FeedLounge.
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I started writing a long, snarky piece on GReader but it started wandering around in a desert of the unreal so I blew it off. At the bottom I simply don’t understand a number of choices that Shellen and Wetherall et cie made even if they want to call this a Labs beta.
For starters the use of real estate is hugely wasteful. Doing the big colorful text thing is fine for Flock to keep an air of anticipation and mystery but just takes more of my time in an RSS reader.
Second, did Google fire the marketing people? Or did Froogle bomb–and how much do you ever hear about it anyway?–so badly that they fired everyone connected to naming product? News, Images, Reader, Mail, Talk… come on.
Third, I’m starting to wonder if the company’s decided they’re all so smart that their designs are the best of all posibble UIs and they don’t need to allow users to make any configuration choices at all past how many items to show on an SRP.
Anyway, FeedLounge people, please remember that some people still believe the old three pane view (as used in SharpReader, for instance) is the best way to read feeds. Allow us to have that setting and I think you’ll be much more successful. Pretty colors and gradient only get you so far.
Hmm, guess this could have been a blog post anyway. But there yuo go.
Bloglines definitely is sorely deficient in many areas, especially as you start to read a lot of feeds (I thought I read a lot at 50something)
Keep us updated on how it goes with FeedLounge, I know it’s not open to the public yet, but I’m definitely evaluating where I can go from Bloglines.
BillSaysThis - take a look at the screenshots on feedlounge.com. We’ve already got the two three pane views and we’re close to finishing up a third view as well.
Alex, I never judge a product from a single screenshot and I’m glad to see you instantly implemented my suggestion.
Winer wrote that Google’s release is a market-changer, and it is, but to me this is yet another sign that perhaps Google isn’t going to be the next monolithic master of the tech universe.
And, oh yeah, invitations to private test releases generally make me happy.
You may want to have a look at http://www.netvibes.com I’m not sure about 490 feeds ( that’s a load of daily reading :), but the UI is very simple, it’s network based and uses a good amount of Ajax so it’s pretty clean.
Bob, NetVibes (for my money) is a personal portal page like MyYahoo or Google Personal and not a feed reader, at least not for anyone with more than a couple of dozens subs. Possibly it’s a terrific personal portal though so far not dislodging MyYahoo for me.
I was also an early fan of Bloglines (~275 feeds) and have felt the same sense of dissatisfaction recently. Currently I’m in the process of trimming the number of feeds down and switching to Gregarius (http://wiki.gregarius.net/index.php/Main_Page). It’s been great so far. You need to host it on your own server but the install was pretty easy. Feedlounge would have been my first choice but I haven’t been able to score an invite and I’m becoming wary about having all my apps hosted on someone else’s machine.
Bill: taking the comments in order -
agreed on the waste of space. i don’t think the UI is particularly good at making use of the real estate available to it.
on the naming front, i actually don’t mind that. simple names, to me, are always better than complex ones. particularly the complex ones that try to fully describe the products function.
as for the UI, while i’m with you in that this isn’t the app for me, i support them trying to be innovative. they might have missed the mark here, but at least they’re not cranking out the same old stuff.
Alex: will do. so far, the experience has been great. it occasionally stops refreshing after i’ve put my machine into suspend a couple of times, but after a login everything’s back to normal. loving the keyboard access.
Bob: yeah, it is a lot of feeds. i’m not like Scoble in that i try to read everyone - there are a number of feeds that i check maybe weekly or biweekly only - but it still makes for a lot of conversation tracking. NetVibes does seem to be a bit too portalish for me, but good to be aware of.
Lee: am actually seeing some traffic from Gregarius these days, so i’ll have to give that a look. can’t speak for the FeedLounge guys on the invite situation, but i do know that they’re trying to make it available to as many people as possible while keeping the experience solid for their existing users.
yo stepho can you put in a word for me at feedlunge. sheesyh
feedlounge. sheesh
Within days of this blog posting, Bloglines has released some new functionality. Is that a good influence or what? Probably not enough to tempt Stephen to return but still …
thanks for quoting me … honored to be including in your blog.
i’ve been using the Rojo (www.rojo.com) reader since january and have become a big fan. Rojo has been a big proponent of tagging which can, over time, suggest good posts and/or feeds to read.
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